Hours after it wins Nobel Peace Prize, rights group’s office seized by Russian court

Memorial, one of the leading Russian civil advocates, has its Moscow HQ declared state property, with prosecutors accusing it of ‘rehabilitating Nazi criminals’

People talk near the entrance to human rights group Memorial's office, in Moscow, Russia, on March 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)
People talk near the entrance to human rights group Memorial's office, in Moscow, Russia, on March 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)

A Moscow court on Friday ordered the seizure of the rights group Memorial’s Moscow headquarters, in a ruling delivered hours after the organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, agencies reported.

The Tverskoy district court ordered the group’s central Moscow headquarters to “become state property,” the Interfax news agency reported.

Memorial, Russia’s most renowned rights group, was officially disbanded by authorities in December last year.

It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier on Friday, along with jailed Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties.

A representative of the general prosecutor’s office accused Memorial in court of “rehabilitating Nazi criminals and discrediting authorities and creating a false image of the USSR.”

Russian authorities have portrayed Memorial as an organization tarnishing the country’s past.

Memorial has documented Stalinist crimes since its creation in 1989, creating a huge historical archive.

Concerns have grown over the archive’s fate and security after the group’s dissolution.

Memorial representative Yan Rachinsky said the group had been offered to take the archives abroad but that a decision had been made to keep them in Russia.

“The archive was collected here and people gave us their documents not for us to take them somewhere,” he said. “Our aim is to preserve the archive.”

The group’s headquarters also regularly hosted exhibitions open to the public.

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